All Those Who Wander
by nicnac918
Summary: The identity crisis John doesn't realize he's having. Third in the From the Ashes a Fire Shall Be Woken, Third in Many Intersecting Planes
1. Chapter 1

The night after John first met Sherlock, he had a dream where he was still himself, but at the same time, in the odd way that dreams had, he was also a hobbit – a human-looking creature that was even shorter than John and had large, very hairy feet – named Bilbo. He was sneaking along down a dark mountain tunnel, far quieter than such very big feet should allow, and at the end of the tunnel there was treasure waiting for him – a treasure and a massive dragon. The dream ended, however, before he was able to do more than glimpse at a gleaming pile of gold.

John woke up feeling strange. Not because of the unusual subject matter of the dream, he'd had loads of dreams that didn't make a whole lot of sense. The strange part was how vivid it had been, almost like one of his Afghanistan dreams. But those dreams were really more like memories he was re-living in his sleep, which, John had always assumed, was what gave them the depth and sense of realness his other dreams didn't normally have.

By the end of the day, he had written the whole thing off as another symptom of his PTSD. Really, with what with chasing after a murderous cabbie and his idiot new flatmate, he had bigger things to worry about.

* * *

><p>John curiously turned Sherlock's 'friend's' skull this way and that, cradling it between the palms of his hands. He had been sent to fetch it from Mrs. Hudson – apparently Sherlock was too 'deep in thought' to be arsed with getting up, but not too deep to keep from giving John orders – on the justification that it was a family heirloom. John was pretty sure that was a lie to get his skull back, but if there ever was a family that would keep a skull as an heirloom, it was the Holmeses.<p>

John was just about to set the skull back down on the mantel when it struck him. "Sherlock, this doesn't look like a normal human skull," he said as he began counting the teeth to see if there really were more of them than normal, or if he was just being delusional.

"That's because it isn't a human skull," Sherlock replied off-handedly.

John hadn't actually expected Sherlock to answer, which is the only explanation he could think of for why it took him so long to ask the obvious follow up question (_What do you _mean_ it isn't a human skull?_) that Sherlock had come out of his mental fugue state enough to properly follow the conversation they were having. At that point, Sherlock refused to elaborate further and honestly looked rather annoyed at himself for saying anything at all.

* * *

><p>It soon became apparent to John that when Sherlock told Lestrade he didn't smoke, he had been very much a former addict talking. It wasn't that he was lying, exactly, he was just coming from a very different perspective. Specifically, he was coming from a perspective that didn't consider going through a pack every couple of months to be smoking, not <em>really<em>. And honestly, as long as Sherlock was staying clean of anything harder, John wasn't too fussed about it.

The interesting thing was Sherlock always smoked in the same exact place: sitting on the sill in 221B with the window open so the smoke could blow outside. It was the considerate thing to do, keeping the smell out of the flat when your flatmate was a non-smoker, but the word considerate and Sherlock didn't belong in the same paragraph, much less the same sentence. Sherlock didn't appear to be a creature of habit in any other respects either and John couldn't help but wonder at it a bit. So the next time he caught Sherlock smoking, he did the sensible thing and asked him.

Sherlock exhaled a puff of smoke and said, "Secondhand smoke contains at least 69 known carcinogens and can also increase the risks of a number of other diseases, including heart disease and respiratory tract infection."

"You do realize the same and worse can be said about actually smoking, right?" John asked, amused.

Sherlock scoffed. "I'm not worried about myself." That led to such an unexpected conclusion that it took longer than it should have for John to work it out. Once he had he kept it to himself. It was such a pleasant thought that he'd rather not ask Sherlock about it and risk being told he was wrong.

"Can you blow smoke rings?" John asked instead, grasping at a random thought that had been floating through his mind.

"No," Sherlock replied absently, before turning back on John and asking, "Can you?" John knew by now, of course, that Sherlock never said things just to make conversation; if he asked a question it was because he genuinely wanted to know the answer. But even for Sherlock that had seemed excessively intense.

"Yes. I mean no," said John, frowning a bit at his bumbling over the answer caused by vague nagging memories. "I knew someone who could, though. I can't remember who it was now, but there was definitely someone. Why is it important?"

Sherlock paused before answering, staring at John with the kind of focus that would be frightening coming from anyone else. After a full minute of that, he took a long drag and then breathed the smoke out very decidedly not as a smoke ring – though how Sherlock made exhaling _decided_ was beyond John. "It isn't."

That seemed like and argument that it wasn't worth even trying to get into, so John just shook his head a little at the general Sherlock-ness of it all, then turned back to the crap telly he'd been watching.

The next morning when John went to make breakfast, he found a half-full pack of cigarettes in the trash and a new box of nicotine patches on the table.

* * *

><p>John was dreaming he was Bilbo again, but this time Sherlock was there too. It wasn't an eventful sort of dream, just John telling Sherlock about his encounter with Smaug the dragon, and Sherlock looking faintly pleased.<p>

John woke from a nightmare to find that, while he hadn't been treed by goblins and giant wolves and wasn't about to either die by burning to death in a fire or from smoke inhalation, he _was_ excessively warm and having difficulties breathing. And both of those problems could be directly attributed to Sherlock, sleeping sprawled on top of John like a very large puppy. "Sherlock!"

Slowly, Sherlock slitted his eyes open, regarding John with a bleary, half-awake expression. "What?"

"What the hell are you doing?"

"Sleeping," Sherlock responded, with the special kind of disdain he reserved for question whose answers were both irrelevant and obvious. Then the wanker closed his eyes and immediately fell back asleep.

"Sherlock!" John repeated, this time accompanying the demand with a vicious poke to the other man in the side.

Sherlock opened his eyes again, clearly exasperated. "What in the world could you possibly need that can't wait until morning?" John didn't answer Sherlock directly, just looked at him until he had made his point about all the times _Sherlock_ had woken _him_ up in the dead of night. "Yes well, my things were important," Sherlock muttered, proving once again that they had very different ideas as to what constituted something as being urgent.

"My things are important too. You can't sleep on top of me, Sherlock." Though to be honest, John wasn't even annoyed anymore. Sherlock had done far stranger things in the time John had known him, and this particular instance seemed like a time when he was crossing the line because he didn't realize it was there, not because he didn't care.

"Why not?"

"For one thing, I'm not gay," John said. It was a bit frustrating how many people had forgotten that lately.

"Dull," Sherlock dismissed. "As long as we both know there is no romantic or sexual implications to it, I don't see why I shouldn't be allowed to sleep wherever I'm most comfortable."

John stopped for a second and really looked at Sherlock. His expression was that of someone who had been woken from a very deep sleep, and the state of his hair proved that he'd been asleep for a few hours at least. And on top of that, Sherlock had made it very clear that he wanted to go back to sleep as soon as John would let him. This from the man who usually only slept in the form of catnaps. For a brief moment, John debated between doing the 'normal' thing and helping Sherlock, but in the end it wasn't even really a question.

"We're not doing this every night," John said finally. Sherlock made a vague noise that, for the sake own his sanity, John chose to interpret as agreement. "And we're definitely not doing this if I have a woman over."

"Obviously," said Sherlock. "I wouldn't want to sleep on top of some random woman."

"Of course not, I don't know what I was thinking," John replied, faintly amused. "Now budge up, you're still not sleeping directly on top of me." John pushed Sherlock off him and the two of them tussled back and forth a bit over an adequate compromise, ending up with Sherlock nestled alongside John with his head on top of his shoulder, a position that could be, if John was willing to think the word, called cuddling. "And I'm still not gay."

"Go to sleep John," Sherlock commanded and, after rolling his eyes, John did.

* * *

><p>"Mycroft was in my dream last night," John said, in the vague hope of snapping Sherlock out of the ennui he'd been stuck in for the past four days.<p>

"Really," said Sherlock, with a nebulous sort of interest, which was more than anything else recently.

"Yeah, though it wasn't Mycroft exactly. It was this old wizard guy, he just felt like Mycroft. One of those odd dream things," John explained.

Sherlock gave a John a sharp look, before pulling out his cell phone and texting furiously. He was probably telling Mycroft off for invading John's dreams, or something ridiculous like that, but John was still willing to count it as a win.

* * *

><p>John had given up on asking Sherlock where they were going ten minutes ago and on trying to figure it out for himself five minutes after that. Now he was just mindlessly following Sherlock along while trying to remember some of the riddles from his dream last night. He had gotten as far as "Cannot be heard, cannot be smelt" in the fifth riddle when a glint of light caught his eye.<p>

He turned his head to look, but it turned out to be just the sunlight reflecting off a plain golden ring in a display window.

"John."

When he took a step closer, it turned out not to be a plain ring, but one with a faint pattern etched on it.

"John."

No, not a pattern, an inscription.

"John!"

His ring, just sitting there waiting for him.

"Bilbo. Bilbo, step away from the ring." Bilbo made a faint noise in acknowledgement of the familiar voice, but he didn't look up and he wouldn't leave his ring. "That's not your ring. You gave Frodo your ring and he threw it into Mt. Doom, remember?"

Bilbo blinked, allowing distant memories to trickle back in. That's right, Frodo had taken the ring, hadn't he? Taken it and it was gone now.

John shook his head and turned to see Sherlock looking concerned, of all things. "Sorry about that, I must have spaced out for a minute," John said, shooting Sherlock a reassuring smile.

Sherlock didn't say anything for a minute, letting his expression make it clear that he was unimpressed with John's explanation, before grabbing John by the shoulders and propelling him along past the jewelry shop they'd stopped in front of. "Come along, we have places to be."

* * *

><p>"Do you know what your problem is?" Sherlock asked one morning, seemingly apropos of nothing, as he sprawled languidly across the sofa.<p>

"Off the top of my head, I would say the fact that I'm seriously considering listening to your diagnosis of an existential problem that I wasn't aware I was having," John quipped, barely pausing in his reading.

"Yes, that's it exactly," Sherlock agreed, which was so unexpected that John folded his paper down and just stared at Sherlock for a minute.

"What, really?" he asked.

"You've been having an identity crisis since we met and you haven't realized it yet. It's annoying." Of course that was the part Sherlock meant, not the one that might imply Sherlock didn't know everything about everything.

"I actually did notice that, ta. I'd have to be a bit thick not to, what with both you and Mycroft pointing it out the first time I met either of you," John reminded him. Just how many things did Sherlock delete anyway?

"I'm not talking about your displacement after you got invalided out of the military," Sherlock said dismissively. "I fixed that ages ago when we got rid of your cane. I'm talking about your other identity crisis."

"I'm having two identity crises at once? Impressive of me," John mused. "Well go on then, I'm sure you want to fix this one too."

"The thing is, it's just stupid," Sherlock said, exploding off the sofa and beginning to pace back and forth. "You know who you are and I know who you are, but you keep letting things that don't matter anymore catch you up over and over again, which is incredibly moronic of you. You need to stop it."

"Alright, why don't you just tell me who I am and then I'll stop worrying about the rest," said John agreeably. When Sherlock got into one of his moods like this, it was usually best just to go along with it if possible until he worked himself out of it. Course, his eyes hadn't started to go hazel, or whatever is was that they did, so it couldn't be too big of a deal yet.

"You're John Watson," said Sherlock. _Obviously,_ said his tone.

Alright, there was being agreeable, and then there was just being a doormat. "I know my own name, you wanker."

Sherlock sighed the sigh of the deeply put upon and elaborated. "You're John Watson, former military, current doctor, though you treat the sniffles a great deal more now than you used to. You have a number of relationships that straddle the line between friend and close acquaintance, but you can't be bothered to put the effort in to get closer to any of them. You have an estranged sister who you would like to reconcile with, but you aren't going to try because you know any attempts to do so would only be sabotaged by her alcoholism. You have a girlfriend who you're a lot less keen on than you pretend to be. And finally there's me, to whom you're completely indispensable both in general and to the Work in specific."

John blinked a couple of times, completely blown back. "That was – well, to be honest most of that was kind of offensive, but the bit at the end was… nice."

"Really?" Sherlock asked, looking confused, like he had never been called 'nice' before.

But then again, it was Sherlock, so it was entirely possible he hadn't. John smiled at him. "Yes, really."


	2. Chapter 2

Sherlock skimmed the jacket and bomb vest he had just ripped off John across the floor, getting it as far away from the two of them as possible. It would have been nice to stand there and just breathe for a moment, but even with Moriarty gone the danger wasn't past yet; Sherlock's eyes were bright orange.

"Sherlock," John said and reached his hand out in Sherlock's direction, both his voice and the gesture weaker than he would have liked.

Still, it was like he had flipped a switch in Sherlock. Just a moment ago he had looked like he was about to take off after Moriarty, but as soon as John spoke, Sherlock turned back to him and began running his hands along John's arms, his chest, his stomach, searching for injuries. "What is it, John? What's wrong?"

"Nothing, I'm fi – Oh, Christ," John said, his words cutting off as his leg gave out on him. Sherlock helped guide John down to a squatting position up against the wall, and then he moved his focus to John's thigh.

"Did they do something to your leg?" Sherlock demanded his eyes flickering red and orange and yellow.

"Just my limp acting up again. I haven't been hurt," John said calmly and firmly, careful with his wording to keep the focus on himself and not on Moriarty or any of his people. John knew Sherlock wouldn't hurt him, but he did worry what Sherlock might do to anyone else while he wasn't entirely in his right mind. It seemed ridiculous now, Moriarty threating to burn the heart out of Sherlock when Sherlock was so clearly flame incarnate.

Sherlock nodded in acknowledgment of John's words, but now that he'd gotten the idea in his head there seemed to be nothing for it but for him to personally verify John's well-being. John was just about to put his foot down as to which areas of his body Sherlock was allowed to inspect for injury and which he was _not,_ when the door opened.

They both froze. For a heart-stopping moment, John was sure it was Moriarty, who had made a mad-cap dash around the building so he could come back in from a different entrance for some reason that undoubtedly made sense to him. Then John saw the umbrella.

"Mycroft," Sherlock said, standing up. "What are you doing here?"

"Really Sherlock, I know you don't think you were being subtle about the little _games_ you were playing," Mycroft said, stuffing so much disdain into the word 'games' that John felt a moment of complete agreement with Mycroft. It didn't feel as strange as he thought it would. "I had planned on keeping any of my involvement in the background, but when John went missing from the CCTV feeds, I thought a personal touch might be needed. I'm still fixing the damages from the last time you went on a rampage."

Sherlock scoffed. "That was centuries ago."

"Precisely," Mycroft quipped back and, almost paradoxically, Sherlock relaxed a bit. But then, bickering was Sherlock and Mycroft's normal form of communication; the familiarity of it probably leant much stronger feelings of comfort and safety than any canned reassuring words that Mycroft could offer.

"Fine. As you can see, John has been recovered, London is intact, and I have no plans to destroy it in the near future. That's your due diligence done, so you can _piss off_ now." John was fairly certain that that in Sherlock language that was dangerously close to an attempt to thank Mycroft for his concern and reassure him they were okay, and by Mycroft small fleeting smile John could tell Mycroft thought so too.

"Doctor Watson does seem to have this situation well in hand," Mycroft agreed pleasantly. "However, I think I'll stick around" – this time when the door opened it really was Moriarty swanning back in – "to handle that one."

"Sorry, boys! I'm soooooo changeable!" Moriarty sing-songed before coming to an abrupt halt. "Oh Sherlock. You called in big brother to help you? Now I really am disappointed."

"He's not here to help _me_," Sherlock said, sounding affronted at the very idea. "He's here to make sure I don't kill you. He still believes in 'mercy' and not just getting rid of useless things."

Mycroft sighed heavily, giving the distinct impression that the two brothers had had this conversation many times before. "The point is not to preserve useless things, but that you can't possibly know who or what might come in handy later. And mercy has served me very well in the past – served both of us, in fact."

Sherlock made a dismissive noise in response, but it was nearly drowned out by Moriarty's laugh. "_You_ are going to show _me_ mercy? I'm afraid you boys don't understand how this works."

"No," Mycroft corrected, "that would be you. Now, _be quiet James Moriarty_."

Later, John wouldn't be able to pinpoint exactly it was about that moment that gave it away: Mycroft's words, his stance, his tone, or even the way he was holding his umbrella – slightly aloft, with a firm grip around the middle. Whatever it was, for just a second John saw double. There was Mycroft, of course, with his ever-present umbrella held almost like a weapon, but overlaying that was the slightly vague image of an old man with long hair, a beard, flowing robes, and a gnarled wooden staff. "Gandalf?"

What should have been a quiet whisper to himself was picked up and amplified in the unnatural silence that followed Mycroft's words, making it loud enough for everyone to hear. Not that it should have mattered anyway, just a nonsense word uttered by a man clearly in shock – it had to be shock. But then Mycroft turned to John with the most genuinely pleasant and genial expression John had ever seen on his face. "Hello Bilbo. So good to see you again."

John's brain broke.

Or at least that's what it felt like as half-remembered vivid dreams and thousands of other moments in-between came rushing to the front of John's mind: the memories of a lifetime, _Bilbo's_ lifetime. _Christ_, John thought, as soon as he was capable of doing so again, _Sherlock was right; I _was_ having an identity crisis. _

Which made it supremely ironic when Sherlock leapt between John and Mycroft and snarled, "His name is John, not Bilbo." John suppressed the urge to giggle – it would only come out hysterical anyway. It wasn't just that Sherlock was protesting when he had seen this coming all along, it was that Sherlock was _Sherlock. _He looked like he could have just stepped out of any one of Bilbo's memories with only a quick stop for a change of clothes. Of course, Sherlock probably didn't remember that any more than John had remembered being Bilbo. And John had no idea how he was even going to begin to explain it.

"Calm down, Sherlock." Or he could just leave the explaining to Mycroft. He'd probably be better at it than John anyway. "I'm hardly going to try to steal treasure from the same dragon twice; you know how much I detest repeating myself."

Wait, what? Who said anything about dragons? The only real dragon John _or_ Bilbo had ever heard of was… Oh.

"You were Smaug," John said to Sherlock, unsure if the words were supposed to be a statement or a question. On the one hand, the whole idea was completely ridiculous, but on the other, it really would explain some things. A lot of things.

"I _am_ Smaug. Do try to keep up," Sherlock snapped, his body lined with tension. The tone was a little unfair John thought. It wasn't as though Sherlock had been being obvious about being a dragon. To the contrary, John was fairly certain Sherlock had been deliberately trying to hide the truth of his alter ego from him… Oh. (Really, wasn't there a limit to how many epiphanies a man was allowed to have in one night?)

"You idiot," said John, his voice somewhere between amused, fond, and exasperated. "If finding a literal bloody head in the fridge wasn't enough to scare me off, it's pretty safe to say nothing will."

"I wasn't worried about that," Sherlock said, belied by the way his posture relaxed. "If nothing else, you have to stay for fear I would destroy half of London if you moved out of Baker Street. "That was an indisputably terrifying statement, and by all rights, John should be heading to the hills to let Gandalf deal with this insane, possessive, wrathful dragon. John grinned.

"Isn't that sweet," Moriarty mocked – somehow John had managed to forget about the _mad bomber_ in the room with them. (Apparently there _was_ a limit to the number of epiphanies a man could have in one night, at least without compromising his ability to pay basic attention to his surroundings.) "But I'm afraid I'm going to have to interrupt, because I DON'T LIKE BEING IGNORED! Always need to be the center of attention. But can you blame me? I am, after all, me."

"He's stronger than you expected," Sherlock said to Mycroft, sounding a little too gleeful for John's taste.

"Stronger than I hoped, certainly, but not stronger than I expected," Mycroft corrected. He hadn't even finished the sentence when about a dozen or so red laser sights appeared, focused on Moriarty. His face became a rictus of wrath and rage, but even he wasn't crazy enough to try anything in the sights of that many snipers. ""I'm smart enough to bring back up when I need it."

"Fine," Sherlock huffed. "But if he escapes-"

"Then I shall bear full responsibility for any damage you cause," said Mycroft. "Now, there's a car waiting out front to take the two of you back to Baker Street. _Straight_ back to Baker Street, Smaug; I don't trust you running around London until after you've had a chance to go back to your lair and settle a bit."

That sounded lovely to John. They could order some Chinese, then John would get a solid 12 to 14 hours sleep, and cap the whole thing off with some mindless hours watching crap telly. Sherlock, however, seemed perfectly content to stand there staring at Moriarty indefinitely. John suspected that Sherlock was just waiting for Moriarty to escape Mycroft's clutches, so Sherlock could wreak the destruction he'd promised. If it had looked like Moriarty escaping was something that was going to happen within the next ten minutes or so, John would be tempted to just wait and let Sherlock have at it. Sherlock seemed calm enough now – his eyes were back to their normal blue-gray with just a few specks of orange – that it would have been a quick death, and there was a far bit of difference between showing mercy to a pathetic creature like Gollum and someone like Moriarty. But in the meantime Moriarty's expression had transitioned from anger to affected boredom, which John knew meant he was trying to make it look like he actually had a plan and wasn't going through some mad mental scramble to figure out what to do next. At least, that's what that meant in mad genius; John assumed brilliant homicidal maniac was close enough to translate.

"Okay. Well then, thank you Mycroft for your help," John said, trying to push things along so Sherlock and he could leave.

"You are quite welcome, Doctor Watson – Bilbo. We'll have to catch up sometime."

"You'll know where to find me. Somehow," John said, valiantly ignoring the way Sherlock was almost growling. Christ, he was flatmates with a dragon. That was going to take some getting used to.

After giving Mycroft a last farewell, John turned and left the room. The trick was to not check if Sherlock was following, otherwise Sherlock would know John was going to wait for him, rather than just strongly suspecting it. Sure enough, by the time John exited the pool room, Sherlock was right there, sweeping out the door behind him.

"You have questions," Sherlock said and John smiled at the memory.

"Gandalf seems different." Of all the multitude of thoughts running through his head, John had no idea why that one had popped out first, but it was as good a place to start as any. Better even, because it could let him work his way up to the part where he was now a piece of a dragon's treasure hoard (yeah, he'd caught on to that, thanks).

"He finds his present appearance suits his needs better than the one you were familiar with," Sherlock said.

"That too, but I was more referring to his, you know, personality."

"Oh, that," Sherlock said. "As it turns out, people actually can change, if it's over the course of millennia. It's something of a shame because he's been frightfully dull ever since Nimue trapped him in that cave."

The name Nimue twigged something in John's brain almost immediately, but it took a solid minute for him to figure out why it sounded familiar. "Sherlock, are you telling me that Mycroft was Gandalf _and_ Merlin?"

"No, he _is_ Gandalf and Merlin," Sherlock corrected, "as well as the vast majority of the other 'good' wizards and a few of the evil ones as well. Some cultures are significantly more intelligent than others."

John giggled. While he had a hard time picturing anyone mistaking Gandalf for anything but a good person, Mycroft he could easily see being mistaken for evil; at some point Gandalf's flair for theatrics had apparently gone from occasional and impressive to unending and creepy. John's giggles set Sherlock to snickering, which made John's laughter worse, which made Sherlock's worse, and so on, until they were just lucky they both didn't collapse onto the floor. It honestly wasn't that funny, but after the past couple of days, they probably had the right to be a bit hysterical.

By the time they had both calmed down, they'd reached the front of the building where one of Mycroft's ubiquitous black cars was waiting. John opened the door to climb in when another thought occurred to him. "If Mycroft is Merlin, does that you're one of those two dragons the kept knocking that guy's castle down with their fighting?"

"It's hardly my fault King Vortigern insisted on building on unstable ground," Sherlock objected disdainfully.

John blinked. He had been joking mostly, since he'd thought that story was just that, a story. But then, he'd thought the same thing about Merlin not five minutes ago, so he supposed that was just what he got for underestimating the Holmeses, especially now that he knew they were also Smaug and Gandalf.

"So what other interesting things have the two of you been up to while I was gone?" John asked.

Sherlock gave John a long intense look. From anyone else it would have been disconcerting, but from Sherlock it was business as usual. Finally, Sherlock rested back into his seat with that smug satisfied air he got when he had confirmed he was right about something. "Absolutely nothing."

* * *

><p>AN: Here ends "From the Ashes a Fire Shall Be Woken." Next part i "Many Intersecting Planes" is "Once Upon a Time in London (and Middle Earth)" (Story ID: 10295185)<p> 


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